Archive
A Recursive Web of Models: Studio Tomás Saraceno’s Working Objects
My article on Studio Tomás Saraceno’s work is now out in the Configurations journal.
The text follows up from the Palais de Tokyo show On Air (curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel) and I’ve tried to articulate these points in the article in a couple of different contexts. While there is clearly lots (more) to be said about questions of artistic practices with animals (including multispecies ethnography), and what that implies for the field of environmental humanities, I am here a tad more focused on the question of the image, the model, and the exchange between art and science. Admittedly, “art and science” is a rather low res description of many of the actual workings of what happens in such practices, which is also why I have mobilised the term working objects (hat tip to Daston and Galison) in this context (while I acknowledge that so much more could be said). And keep your eyes open for Sasha Engelmann’s work on Studio Saraceno’s work btw.
In the meantime, see also the video “Studio Visit with Tomás Saraceno“.
Oberhausen interview
Here’s a new video interview, done for the Oberhausen film festival. Click below the image to get to the video where we discuss viruses, digital culture, masks, and more. The book Digital Contagions is one starting point but we end up in many other areas too.
Models, Diagrams, and Working Objects: On Studio Tomas Saraceno
Here’s a video recording of my IKKM lecture. It focuses on Studio Tomas Saraceno and in parts, contextualises some of the work in relation to environmental humanities and media.
On Air, Inhale
I had the pleasure of contributing to Tomas Saraceno’s new show On Air at Palais de Tokyo with a short text for the publication as well as with a talk as part of the seminar on December 14th, which was organized by Filipa Ramos. The show itself moves from spiders and webs to air and balloons, from entanglements of the Anthropocene to the light materials of the Aerocene combining speculative design, investigation of materials and beautiful installation structures.
My short text for the catalogue was titled “Inhale”:
Inhale and you engage with history, not metaphorically, nor poetically but literally. Inhale the air of a city and you inhale its industrial legacy, its current transport system, its chemistry built at the back of technological progress. There’s more in the air and the sky than meets the eye. On the level of eyes, nostrils and skin, the city and its surroundings, it becomes a touch. It is inhaled, enters the body as haptic environment. It is the haptic environment in which one sees and encounters the surroundings as a large scale Air-Conditioning Show. It is history carried forward as chemistry. It is technology breathed in as minuscule particles. The air is the environment we have to somehow learn to address as one way to invent a breathable future.
De insectos, máquinas y posverdades
The new issue of the Luthor journal (published by colleagues in Argentine) is out and with a focus on media archaeology. The issue also includes an interview with me (“De insectos, máquinas y posverdades“) for those interested. We discuss media archaeology and transdisciplinarity, materiality, questions of geography as well as some brief points about literature in relation to the field. I also mention some current and emerging projects, from fashion film to operational images.
Edit: now the original English version of the interview (not copyedited) is also available (PDF): download here.
Insect Media, the Polish Translation: Owady i media
With a beautiful yellow cover, Insect Media comes out as a Polish translation: Owady i media! The translation is published by the Krakow based press Księgarnia Akademicka and the “Interpretations” series focusing on cultural studies, performance studies and new historicism. The series has published books such as Hans-Thies Lehmann’s “Postdramatic Theatre”, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s “Transformative Power of Performance”, Judith Butler’s “Antigone’s Claim”, Thierry Bardini’s Junkware and Freddie Rokem’s “Performing History”. A massive thanks to the series editors and the translators professor Małgorzata Sugiera and Dr. Mateusz Borowski for their work on the translation!
Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology (2010, University of Minnesota Press) is part of the trio of books that came out in English between 2007 and 2015, including also Digital Contagions (2007, 2nd. new edition with a preface by Sean Cubitt in 2016, Peter Lang Publishing) and A Geology of Media (2015, University of Minnesota Press). Insect Media won the 2012 Anne Friedberg Award for Innovative Scholarship (Society for Cinema and Media Studies, SCMS). Eugene Thacker kindly wrote about the book: “With Insect Media, Jussi Parikka offers a theory of media that challenges our traditional views of the natural and the artificial. Parikka not only understands insects through the lens of media and mediation, he also unearths an insect logic at the heart of our contemporary fascination with networks, swarming, and intelligent agents. Such a project requires the ability to interweave cultural theory with a deep understanding of the sciences—something for which Parikka is well-suited. Most importantly, Insect Media reminds us of the non-human aspect of media, communication, intelligence. Insect Media is a book that is sure to create a buzz.”
Some earlier reviews of Insect Media:
Theory & Event
Mute Magazine
Rhizome
WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly [PDF]
Insects and Media (a short interview)
During an earlier transmediale I was interviewed by Daniel Fetzner in Berlin. This short interview is now downloadable here as a PDF [insects-and-media-interview] and briefly discusses Insect Media with also a nod to Digital Contagions and “viral capitalism”.
Reference to the interview:
Fetzner, D./Dornberg. M. (2015) BUZZ – Parasitäre Ökologien. Freiburg
Digital Thought Deserter: An Interview in e-flux
In the new e-flux issue #62 you will also find an interview Paul Feigelfeld conducted with me: “Media Archaeology Out of Nature“. It focuses primarily on the themes of media theory, ecology and interfaces also with the work we do with the emerging Consortium (with WSA, University of California San Diego and Parsons School of Design, New School); synthetic intelligence, the planetary media condition, remote sensing, etc.
With a focus on the “media ecology”-trilogy of Digital Contagions, Insect Media, and the forthcoming A Geology of Media, the interview maps topics related to the ecopolitics of technological culture. A warm thanks to Paul for the interview and supporting my aspirations to be a digital thought deserter.
“Media theory would become boring if it were merely about the digital or other preset determinations. There are too many “digital thought leaders” already. We need digital thought deserters, to poach an idea from Blixa Bargeld. In an interview, the Einstürzende Neubauten frontman voiced his preference for a different military term than “avant-garde” for his artistic activity: that of the deserter. He identifies not with the leader but rather with the partisan, “somebody in the woods who does something else and storms on the army at the moment they did not expect it.”7 Evacuate yourself from the obvious, by conceptual or historical means. Refuse prefabricated discussions, determinations into analogue or digital. Leave for the woods.
But don’t mistake that for a Luddite gesture. Instead, I remember the interview you did with Erich Hörl, where he called for a “neo-cybernetic underground”—one that “does not let itself be dictated by the meaning of the ecologic and of technology, neither by governments, nor by industries.”8 It’s a political call as much as an environmental-ecological one—a call that refers back to multiple (Guattarian) ecologies: not just the environment but the political, social, economic, psychic, social, and, indeed, media ecologies.”
Besides that longer e-flux text, two other short texts appeared the same day: a general audience text on media and the Anthropocene in Conversation and also a mini-interview conducted by the Finnish Institute in London as part of their Made By-series.
Modern Weekly Insect Media
There’s an interview with me in the new issue of Modern Weekly (Shanghai) thanks to Paul Feigelfeld’s apt questions and incisive comments. The chat focuses on insect media, animals and technological culture. We are working on an edited and extended English version too.
Insect Media: Introduction
I’ve uploaded the Introduction-chapter of Insect Media online on Academia.edu! More info on the book, as before, on University of Minnesota Press website. If you want a quick glimpse into the arguments of the book, some reviews online include Jacob Gaboury’s in Rhizome and Jennifer Gabrys’ in Mute.
A short blog post on “What is Insect Media?” gives a condensed glimpse into some of the themes. For a more popular take, see what Wired wrote about the book.
Machinology 